Pass the Pills, Please

Hi, my name is Rebekah and I'm a podcast addict.

I spend my days in yoga pants, earphones, running shoes, and covered in sweat.  Cleaning products are sometimes my only companions.  I have keys to most of my clients' houses so I don't interact with people frequently while I work.

So, podcasts it is.

I have become a listener of many different true crime podcasts.  They are eerie because they delve into the person's personality, their lives, their relationships, their mental state overall, and their mental state at the time of the crime.

Criminals are not very different from non-criminals.

I have lived a good portion of my life attempting to be free of medications.  I have been on a variety of different anti-depressants, anti-anxieties, and mood stabilizers.  I have a multitude of diagnosis (no idea what the plural of that is)....Anxiety disorder, PTSD, Bipolar II (not to be confused with the more severe Bipolar I), and ADHD.  I sought comfort in a psychiatrists' office at many different stages of my life.  I was in an abusive relationship and received the Bipolar diagnosis.  I held my son when he was dead and received the PTSD diagnosis.  I lived with an unstable alcoholic and received the Anxiety disorder diagnosis.  I was a single mom running a business with a million balls in the air and received the ADHD diagnosis.

Every time I attempted to live a life free of medication, it ended in failure.  I've had moments of cutting, wailing, pinching myself to alleviate the intense emotion, sleeping just to end the pain, medicating myself with alcohol and men.

The last time I stopped taking medication I was recently divorced and scared myself so badly I left a note before I went to sleep one night explaining that I had taken a bunch of random medications...that I loved my boys and I didn't mean to kill myself.

Firm sigh.

God made me with a deficit in my brain...I need medication to function.

I am very perturbed at the general attitude towards medications that are prescribed for mental health.

I have lived without them and I was miserable.  My kids were miserable.  My family was worried.

I watch many people I love struggle daily.  I'm not saying they all need to be medicated.  Because for some, it's a simple adjustment to our daily lives that our brains need.  Or more sleep.  Or better food.  Or more exercise.  For others like myself, we need the artillery to be balanced.  The truth is, our brain can only tolerate so much stress before we start to deteriorate.  And we live in a time where our brains are not given much nutrition. 

We are overworked, under slept, over-stressed.  We eat food that is lacking in nutrients.  Even the soil we grow our produce in is depleted and stressed out.  We are never still.  We look for other things that are just as weak and empty as us except Jesus to provide us with strength.  We take quick showers instead of long baths.  We brush our teeth furiously.  We are always on some form of technology.  We are bombarded with information and negativity. We live in small houses with our neighbors on top of us.  We can't see the stars.  Our kids have more homework than they should.  Life is extremely expensive.  We have multiple jobs to make ends meet.  We don't live in a calm environment with wide, open spaces that would give our brains time to heal and process.  We live in chaos.

Yet we expect that we should function as normally and peacefully as if we lived in the middle of nowhere, on a hill, surrounded by stars at night and beautiful sunrises in the morning, with no worries except what's eating our tomatoes in the garden and if we can all fit in the RV for our Thanksgiving trip (like my parents...insert jealousy) with little effort.

And we wonder why there are so many criminals.

I identify with most of the people that commit heinous crimes in my podcasts because they are usually in-the-heat-of-the-moment criminals.  They make one split decision based on the anarchy taking place in their brains and are forever doomed. (Now the sociopaths...God help them...totally different brains.)

If you don't identify with this, then you are one of the few who have a pristine brain...or are in total denial.  It's most likely the latter.

If the alternative to living a healthy, stable life is chaos and misery resulting in being the subject of a true crime podcast, then pass the pills, please.